


Monsters and Bastards

by orphan_account



Category: Seraphina - Rachel Hartman, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Crossover, Don't Like Don't Read, Dragons, F/F, I didn't edit this, Speciesism, even if you haven't read seraphina, forbidden relationship, nerys is a dragon in human form, this is for me not you, which you should, you can totally read it though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 21:36:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20181103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jadzia is the princess and first heir to the throne of Goredd. Nerys is a dragon diplomat, there for talks between their peoples. In a medieval setting, their relationship is illegal both as a human and a dragon, and as two women.





	Monsters and Bastards

Jadzia may have been the princess and first heir of Goredd, the most prominent queendom in all of the Southlands. And she may have been expected to uphold a certain level of...decorum as a result of her position and social status. And it may have been the night before the beginning of the talks with the new draconian liaison officers, the results of which could have far-reaching consequences, with the potential to prevent war or bring it about in the first place.

But that didn’t mean that she was going to deprive herself of a good time tonight. Her presence tomorrow was a formality more than anything; her mother, the queen of Goredd, would be doing most of the negotiating, and as long as she showed up, Jadzia would be fulfilling her duty in the talks.

That’s how she justified to herself sneaking out to Quighole, anyway. Even if there hadn’t been an important diplomatic conference tomorrow morning, she would never have been allowed there. It was true that Goredd had been at peace with dragonkind for forty years now, and every day there were more saarantrai, dragons in human form, in Lavondaville, the capital of Goredd. But even as Queen Farrah continued to advocate for the acceptance and inclusion of saarantrai and their lizard-like cousins, the quigutl, she privately insisted that Jadzia should stay away from them whenever possible.

Jadzia was 28, meaning that she had never lived through the dragon war. Even her mother, who had given birth to Jadzia when she was 17, had been only five when the war ended in a treaty enacted by her mother, the late Queen Lavonda. And yet the prejudice and hate between the two species still remained, although Jadzia did her best to work through her own. If she was going to be queen someday, then she couldn’t be held down by antiquated notions about the proper roles of humans and dragons in society. She had to embrace their differences.

That’s why she loved going to Quighole so much. The quigutl weren’t able to transform like their cousins the dragons, and their extra limbs, throat pouches, and odor terrified the ignorant human denizens of Lavondaville. In response, the queen had made it illegal for them to be outside of the neighborhood Quighole at night, going so far as to lock them in: “for their own safety, of course.” Even though saarantrai weren’t legally bound to this neighborhood, they, too, flocked there to be among their own people. Quighole also attracted human students, studying under saar physicians, and in general, it was a very diverse and accepting place.

Jadzia also appreciated that dragons and quigutl, unlike humans, placed fewer restrictions on romance. Even though dragons disliked emotion of any kind—even legally forcing some dragons to be excised, having the emotions and the memories of emotion cut out of their brains after being in human form—they took no issue with Daanites or with people like Jadzia, who didn’t care about the gender of their partner. For them, it was the emotion itself that was criminal, not the genders of the people involved. And as long as their own species stayed out of it, they didn’t care. As a result, Quighole was a sanctuary not just for quigutl and dragons, but for human sinners rejected by the faith of Allsaints.

Jadzia had been coming to Quighole weekly for about a year, wearing a disguise and using a password that an ex, Lenara, had given her before leaving to go to the more tolerant city-state of Porphyry, in the North. The gates to Quighole were locked, but the houses on either side of it had back doors, and Jadzia approached one now, carefully lifting her approximation of a peasant’s clothing as she stepped through someone’s muddy pigsty. She knocked at the door several times and then scratched at it, peeling off some of the once-blue paint with her fingernails. A hatch opened, and a woman’s eyes looked through.

“Who is it?” the woman asked.

Quietly, Jadzia responded, “It’s the polecat. I’ve come to nix the mink.”

The door opened, and Jadzia was led down into a warm and foul-smelling pub, packed full of drunk humans, sober saarantrai (their treaty with humanity prevented them from drinking alcohol), and quigutl, crawling under the tables and across the ceiling. It was at once distant and alien, yet impossibly familiar to Jadzia, who recognized this state of otherness as a part of herself.

She instinctively glanced toward her usual table in the back right corner of the room and was surprised to see that it was occupied by a woman: a human, judging by the absence of a bell distinguishing her as a saar. Of course, she could have been a bell-exempt scholar—a dragon permitted to eschew the bell for their studies—but that was unlikely. She had short, reddish hair, making Jadzia wonder if she was from the nearby country of Ninys. Her expression wasn’t welcoming, but it seemed to Jadzia that anyone who went to a public house and sat at a table with open seats instead of at the bar was asking for someone to sit with her.

The woman glanced up at Jadzia and did a double-take, probably realizing that she was being watched. She suddenly became preternaturally fixated on the book she was reading, trying to make it look like she wasn’t still looking at Jadzia. The princess couldn’t help but smirk at the sudden attention. She decided to go over and ask this woman what she was doing alone, at night, in Quighole. As the future queen, it was her responsibility to interact with the people of Goredd and learn more about them, and that was a good enough reason as any to go and talk to her.

It certainly had nothing to do her cuteness, nor the slight blush that Jadzia could already feel on her own cheeks. Definitely not.

Jadzia strode over to the table jauntily and slid into the seat across from the woman, who closed her book and looked up with something resembling curiosity. Or maybe nervousness. Or maybe both. Who could say?

Jadzia leaned over the table until she was just a few inches from the woman’s face, reaching her right hand across at the same time. “I’m Jadzia,” she said, not realizing until a few seconds later that she probably should have offered a fake name.

If the woman suspected that she was Princess Jadzia (it wasn’t the most common name in Goredd, but there were certainly others that shared it), she didn’t show it. She looked quizzically at Jadzia’s hand before taking it in a handshake. “Nerys.”

Still holding the woman’s hand, Jadzia raised an eyebrow and remarked, “Nerys? I’ve never heard that name before.”

Nerys hesitated. “It’s, uh...Samsamese.” She looked down as if just noticing that they were she was still holding Jadzia’s hand, then rapidly pulled her own back, placing it in her lap.

“Nerys” certainly didn’t sound like a Samsamese name, but Jadzia didn’t feel worldly or confident enough to say that, so she let it go. She leaned back into her seat, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Tell me, Nerys, what is a lovely lady like yourself doing in a pub in Quighole?”

She hadn’t been particularly subtle, yet Nerys remained somewhat stoic—and highly uninformative—in her response: “Reading.” She gestured to her book as if a visual aid might help Jadzia to understand.

She swallowed a laugh. “Why here? Wouldn’t it be quieter and easier to read somewhere else?”

“Perhaps.”

Either she was telling Jadzia nothing, or she was accidentally revealing her entire motive for being here. Jadzia fancied herself somewhat of a detective, and she was excited to be...investigating this woman, Nerys.

“Maybe you came for the people, then. Looking for anyone in particular?”

Nerys paused, looking Jadzia’s face up and down, then nodded. Her suspicions had been correct, it seemed. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who came to Quighole looking for a good time.

“Found anyone yet?” she asked smugly, knowing the answer already.

Nerys nodded again. “I think so.”

Jadzia, maintaining eye contact the whole time, leaned across the table and held the woman’s chin in her thumb and forefinger, tilting it upward. At last, she closed her eyes as she brought their lips together in a kiss.

The kiss lasted for a few seconds, and when Jadzia finally began to pull back, Nerys awkwardly grabbed her shoulders with her hands and kissed her again, almost making the princess laugh. She liked this one.

When they finally pulled apart, Jadzia noticed stares in their direction from all around the room. Even in Quighole, where they wouldn’t be reported, two women kissing drew a lot of attention.

Jadzia was going to propose that they find somewhere more private, perhaps a room upstairs, but when she looked back to Nerys, she had gone alarmingly pale, almost as if silver blood were rushing to her cheeks in a subtle blush. She was looking at a pair of saarantrai sitting at the bar, but who had turned around to stare at them. The silver bells marking them, hanging on chains around their necks, rang haughtily and judgmentally as Nerys frantically fished money from a satchel at her side, placing it on the table and stowing her book away.

Jadzia stood up as if to stop her. “Where are you going?” Had she misread the situation?

Nerys refused to meet her eye. “I have to go,” she said, turning and rushing out the front door. Jadzia couldn’t follow her; she had never been out into the main part of Quighole, and for all her talk of rejecting prejudice and bias, she didn’t feel safe among the quigutl and dragons there. She looked back down at the gold coin that Nerys had left on the table for the waiter, still spinning from being slammed down so abruptly.

The two saarantrai at the bar had turned back around and were whispering to each other now, something that Jadzia couldn’t make out. Why did they care what two human women did, in Quighole of all places? They couldn’t have identified her as the first heir to the throne, right? They’d seemed more fixated on Nerys, though. Did they know her?

Eventually, Jadzia accepted that she couldn’t answer these questions. She sat for half an hour, nursing an ale and watching the quigutl, building things out of metal and melted glass, and the dragons, discussing mathematics, science, and philosophy. There could be acceptance between their peoples; she knew it.

She pulled out a timepiece—made by quigutl, in fact—and realized that she ought to go home and get some sleep before the meeting tomorrow. The dragons had scheduled it ridiculously early. Their personal discipline meant that for them, it wasn’t a problem; they didn’t understand why humans were so insistent that they have some time to sleep in first. “You can just wake up earlier,” one saar had proposed, and Queen Farrah, not wanting a conflict, had agreed.

Jadzia paid the bartender and got up to leave, taking one last look around the pub before pulling her imitation of a peasant’s cloak around her and heading back to Castle Orison.

-

Jadzia’s quigutl-made timepiece also functioned as an alarm. She’d barely remembered to set it before going to sleep the night before, and now she almost wished she had forgotten. It screeched obscenely loudly for the time of day, and she considered throwing it against the wall and going back to sleep. She probably would have, too, if not for the knock that came at her door just then from a butler sent by her mother to remind her to get ready.

She hastily pulled on a gown and brushed back her long, dark hair, pinning it behind her head with a silver clasp. She looked acceptable, and the dragons, who supposedly didn’t understand the human obsession with appearance and fashion, probably wouldn’t notice the dark circles under her eyes.

They might smell that she had been in Quighole, though. Her mother probably wouldn’t recognize the smell, but Jadzia couldn’t get it out, and the queen would certainly notice it. She’d notice the dark circles, too, but hopefully Jadzia would be able to escape from her mother’s wrath before she had a chance to call her out after the dragon diplomats left.

As she went to leave, she consciously changed her composure from _confident and flirtatious_ to _regal and polite_. She didn’t like playing the princess for these events, but this wasn’t about her; it was about Goredd and the people who lived there. For them, she would put on a mask and do her part.

She actually managed to reach the conference room early, where she subtly helped herself to a glass of wine, then stood waiting with her hands clasped behind her back—a habit she’d picked up subconsciously at some point. Her mother was the first to get there after her, the saarantrai close behind. She gave her daughter a once-over and scoffed, forcing Jadzia to stifle a giggle at her uptightness. They were definitely going to be talking about this later.

Queen Farrah managed to warn, “You better take this seriously, Jadzia, or it could destroy our peace with dragonkind.”

“What makes you think I’m not taking this seriously?” Jadzia replied, feigning shock and offense, even though she’d already told the queen days ago, in no uncertain times, that she didn’t want to do this and didn’t think it was all that important.

The queen didn’t respond but instead smiled, and Jadzia followed her gaze out to see the dragon officials approaching them from the hallway. There were five of them, all in their human forms (as fit for court), and they bowed in deference to the queen as they approached. Jadzia could only see the first four, the last one being short and hidden behind the rest of the group. The queen inclined her head graciously and extended her hand in greeting. The lead saarantras was a woman, and yet she wore a doublet, breeches, and boots; dragons also seemed to reject human gender roles, another reason that Jadzia admired them. The woman shook the queen’s hand before speaking.

“Queen Farrah, we thank you for welcoming us to Goredd. I am saar Tav, and with me are,” she gestured to each of the people with her in turn, “saars Chec, Pitat, Dalan, and Nerys.”

Jadzia had planned on not paying attention and just letting her mother handle the entire affair, but now, she suddenly snapped back to reality. Nerys? How common was a name like that?

She hadn’t been able to see all of the dragon diplomats before, but now they took their seats at the conference table, and Jadzia finally got a look at the short one in the back.

It was the woman from the pub last night, Nerys.

She was a dragon.

**Author's Note:**

> this is so bad yikes


End file.
